WELCOME!

Dear reader:

I've decided to create a blog to be able to share with all of you some of the helpful tips I've learned along the way to become more healthy and fit. The reason why I have decided to do this is because I love to help people, and I know thru personal experience that good physical health will effect aspects of your life.

I am not here to try and give my opinions, although I will share some. The information I will bring will be based on facts and research, as well as my own personal results that edify and backup that research. Think of me as your own personal guinea pig! Although, everyone is different, and everyone has different needs. Hopefully the information I will be sharing with all of you will help you relate to your own personal needs. And of course, if you have questions or comments, please direct them here!

MY PERSONAL STORY:

Please keep in mind that this is my own story and therefore it will contain my own opinions about myself. Some of the stories may relate to some people, and not to others. These stories will relate to my eventual changing of my eating and exercise habits.

There are a few events in my life which eventually gave me the desire to take control of my personal health and fitness. Obviously, being 27 years old is one of them, as I am not getting any younger, and I have years of bad eating habits behind me that were pushing me down a road to an early grave for sure. But in order to talk about where I am now and how I got there, I have to start from the beginning.

I will begin with the earliest memory I have of myself: a scrawny, wimpy weakling. As a little kid I was a runt. I was picked on a lot as a kid, and I remember kids in classes always being bigger and tougher than me. I know kids get picked on a lot in school but I felt like I was the kid who got it the worst. Heak, even one of the teachers in the school called me "shrimps"! Needless to say, as a little kid I was quite tiny. How I ended up being 5'9 is a miracle within itself! My mom is 5'1 and my dad was 5'6, so somehow I got lucky.

I remember that in 8th grade I was about 80 pounds. I think that's pretty light for a boy at that age. I graduated high school weighing 155. Now, lemme talk about my eating habits in high school for a moment.

My day started off with either no breakfast at all, or a breakfast I bought from school: a bagel (with no nutritional value) with a greasy sausage patty and cheese in the middle of it. This is certainly not a healthy option. What you put in your body (or don't put in) effects how you not just how you feel, but how you think. I'll cover that subject in a blog I will write very soon, within the next week or so.

Lunch was very late in the day. For the majority of high school, I had lunch within the last part of the day. So imagine that you wake up and you don't eat breakfast, and then you go thru an entire day without eating, except at lunch, which is right before you last class of the day. How would you perform? Or how would you not perform, is more like it...

Here was my typical lunch: I ate what I wanted, no matter how bad it was, and I ate till I couldn't. The first part of lunch at school consisted of 3-5 slices (usually 5) of frozen, processed, greasy, trans-fatty frozen pizza that I bought at school. It tasted good to me, which is why I bought it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Included with that were 2 pints of chocolate milk, and/or a 16 ounce Kiwi-Strawberry Snapple. For desert, I'd have "Mrs. Freshley's Golden Creme Cakes", served in a pack of 3. (Like Twinkies, but softer). NO DOUBT that back then (1996-2000) that stuff was LOADED with trans fat. (I will be writing a blog about foods to avoid, and trans fats are absolutely one of them, and I'll explain why). If I was still hungry (which I usually was, after all, I DID skip breakfast) I would buy a twin pack of "Mrs. Freshley's Buddy Bars" (peanut butter between 3 wafers covered in chocolate...you're average processed peanut butter bar.)

So to recap:

3-5 (usually 5) slices of pizza

16 ounce Kiwi Strawberry Snapple and/or

2 pints chocolate milk

3 pack golden cremes

2 pack peanut butter bars

Add to the fact that, for most of high school my lunch was only one period before the last period of school. So guess what I was doing during that class? SLEEPING. I was in a coma for most of that class, and it's only by a miracle that I passed.

I can't imagine how many calories and processed sugar I must have taken in per lunch, but I'm surprised I didn't develop type 2 diabetes or have a heart attack. Keep in mind, this is what it was like for MOST of high school, and I didn't even cover my jr. high eating disasters.

And of course, I never had fresh fruits or vegetables. I didn't even eat veggies at dinner. Needless to say, it was bad. But don't think for one second that just because I was young and in high school that this should be an excuse. I'M LUCKY that I had the option to take control of what I put in my body, because frankly, what I ate should have killed me. No doubt I had a super fast metabolism (just like my dad when he was my age) that kept me thin...but that caught up to me (just like it caught up to him).

At some point, around age 23 or 24, EVERYTHING came to a rock solid halt. My metabolism wasn't the kindled fire it used to be. Instead, my energy was very sluggish, and my stomach was starting to turn into a "pot-belly". What used to be a guy who was skinny as a rail at age 20 and 21 was now starting to get a "gut".

I'll never forget my friend pointing it out to me, either. We were at a friend's house, and my friend Mike said to me, "Do you drink beer?" I said I didn't, and asked why. He said, "Because you've got a beer gut". I still remember it like it was yesterday, and that resonated something in me that finally caused me to change!! So Mike, if you're reading this, I do have to thank you, my friend.

I still ate anything I felt like, and I still treated my body however I felt. The one thing that changed was watching dad get type 2 diabetes because of his weight. I decided to start taking high potency multivitamins.

Using a multivitamin was a good start to getting in the habit of putting better things in my diet. At this point, I was now out of community college and at SUNY Fredonia. I had read somewhere that bottom feeders in the ocean contain waste material and mercury so I cut that out of my diet. About 6 months later, I decided to cut all pork out of my diet as well, for the same reason. (I will go in detail about that in the blog about what to never ever put in your body. Some of you will disagree, but as I said before, I will be writing about facts and not about opinion unless it parallels some story within my own life.) My big downfall was the QUANTITY of food I would consume, and the TIMING as to when I would eat.

At Fredonia, they had an eating establishment called the "William's Center" or "Willy C" to us cool people. Anyway, at night, they served an entire box of pizza and an extra large soft drink for only 2 meals from your meal plan. They called it "late night at the Willy C". Well, this late night was great, because I would stuff myself silly with all of the pizza I could eat (what is it with me and pizza anyway??) and then you could guzzle down a 40 ounce soda (or in my case a "pink lemonade" with no ice.........loaded with high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, processed sugar and artifical colours...)

And because this was indeed late at night, guess what I would do next? I'd go to sleep of course! This is what I call living the "sumo wrestler lifestyle" because that's how sumo wrestlers become so large. Here is what I found on wikipedia:

Rikishi are not normally allowed to eat breakfast and are expected to have a form of siesta after a large lunch. The most common type of lunch served is the traditional "sumo meal" of chankonabe which consists of a simmering stew cooked at table which contains various fish, meat, and vegetables. It is usually eaten with rice and washed down with beer. This regimen of no breakfast and a large lunch followed by a sleep helps rikishi put on weight so as to compete more effectively. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo)

Interesting:

They don't eat breakfast (like me in high school and most of college)

They eat a very large lunch (check)

They'd nap after (wow)

Sounds like me.

By the way, I will be talking about our nutrition as how it relates to our health. Today, I hardly ever get sick. Back in high school up until I changed my physical habits and nutrition, I ALWAYS got sick. Every other month I would have severe ear infections. This is not only proven by my example, but I'll use facts to back this up as well.

Summer of 2007 was another turning point. I went to Florida for a week to help chaperon our church youth group on a trip. I remember sitting in the pool seeing the young fit high school guys and thinking, "I wish I had actually taken physical fitness seriously when I was that age". I felt so embarrassed and disgusted by the way I looked that I didn't really want to take my shirt off. I remember looking at the photos of myself from that whole year and thinking that I'm in big trouble with my weight.

October 26, 2007 was the major spark that eventually ignited a whole fire of change. I was attending SUNY Purchase for jazz studies, and I had traveled to Schenectady to see a concert. That night I was sitting on the couch talking to my mom, with the television on. We were flipping thru the channels when we came to a program called "Get Ripped in 90 Days". We stopped on that channel and mom and I were amazed at the infomercial. The people we saw and the dramatic changes they had made were enough for me to say, "Mom, I don't want anything else for my birthday (which was a month away), I JUST WANT THAT". My mom agreed (she still got me my traditional Hess truck she buys me for my birthday every year, tho :) ) and right around the time of my birthday, or, "Power 90 Extreme" had come to my door.

Well folks, unfortunately my physique was so out of shape, that I didn't pass the preliminary fitness test in the first few pages of the guide book of the program. I didn't want to risk injury or heart attack so I decided not to attempt the program. But I wasn't going to give up on changing my lifestyle. If there was a "Power 90 extreme", surely there must be a "Power 90 ____". And sure enough,
was one of the first programs the company had made. So, on February 4th, about a week after the 2nd semester of school started, I embarked on a quest that changed my life forever. The program came with simple recipes for healthy meals, a program guide to help me learn what in the world I was doing, and I MADE SURE that I always had a "why" in mind for doing something like this.

These exercise programs are not just about exercising, as that is only part of the equation. I decided that I did not want to keep bombarding my body with bad food. I was so adamant about this that I pretty much went cold turkey on cutting out the things that shouldn't be put into a person's body. I've made it a habit of cutting out pork, shellfish, processed food,

white flour, hydrogenated oils, white sugar, soft drinks, high fructose corn
syrup, artificial sweeteners and flavours and colours, alcohol, and I make sure I drink
plenty of water and eat raw, organic foods as much as possible. I will go into detail about why people should not eat these "foods" in an upcoming blog, and of course it will be based purely on fact, not opinion.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, feel free to leave comments or questions.

Dave Rydelnik

Get Instant MLM Success Secrets now... Click here!